Scottish Winter

The Scottish winter so far has been much better than expected. It’s been mostly dry, often sunny, with trees still wearing their autumnal colours. Edinburgh opened its Christmas market a few days ago, and while it’s not exactly like the German ones it does come close (and I now know what was missing: Wham!’s “Last Christmas”). The smells are the same, and the Glühwein signs everywhere make me feel like home. The festive lighting and the setting underneath the castle add a lot to the atmosphere. And it turns out that two Glühweins with a friend are enough to make me perfectly happy, and in such a mood we went to a jam session at the packed Whighams Jazz Club where I was even happier to discover about 15 familiar faces in the crowd. Some of us squeezed around a table sharing two chairs per three people and getting really cozy. Some attempted to dance in the very small spaces between tables, and I walked around and handed out the first batch of Christmas cookies I made this year.